Virtualization and automation are key capabilities desired of Next Generation Data Centers (NGDC) for enterprises. As referred herein, a data center typically includes a location, such as a room that houses computer systems and associated components to store and manage data critical to the mission(s) of an enterprise. The primary motivation for enterprises to adopt virtualization technologies is the promise of creating a more agile and dynamic information technology (IT) infrastructure. To achieve this goal, virtualization technologies have been used to implement server consolidation so as to reduce the total number of servers in response to the problem of server sprawl in a data center. Server sprawl occurs when multiple, under-utilized servers take up more space and consume more resources than can be justified by their workloads.
One example of virtualization technologies being adopted for server consolidation is the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM), also known as a Virtual Machine (VM) host or a hypervisor. The VMM is a software component or layer that is implemented in a physical or hardware machine, system, or platform to host VM guests therein, which are isolated virtual environments on the shared hardware platform. Accordingly, VMMs enable diverse applications to run in isolated environments on a shared hardware platform, and in such a way so as to provide some degree of fault and performance isolation between the consolidated applications.
As virtual machines and systems enter the mainstream and are deployed in larger numbers for implementation of NGDCs, manageability, automation, accurate resource accounting and quality-of-service-aware (QoS-aware) resource allocation have become the real differentiators to help enterprises create dynamic IT infrastructures for their NGDCs.